


back to the end

by corligno



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27052933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corligno/pseuds/corligno
Summary: ALTERNATE ENDING: Jamie figures out a way to bring Dani back and the ending changes.I stg I don't know how to write summaries but please give this a shot. Please.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 29
Kudos: 310





	back to the end

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive my English, it's not my first language! Hope you enjoy :)

_“... The gardener said the words she’d heard those years ago. She willed it with everything she had. ‘You, me us. Us'. 'Take me with you,' she cried in her heart. 'Take me, drag me like you did the others'. But the lady in the lake was different now. The lady in the lake was also Dani. And Dani wouldn't. Dani would never. In fact, no one would be taken. And no one has been taken to this day”._

Jamie, the gardener, swam to the edge of the lake and screamed with the pain that lacerated her lungs and throat. Before diving into the cold, fetid waters of the lake at Bly Manor, for a second of deceptive illusion she believed she would not find Dani at the bottom. She simply disbelieved that she could be there, perfectly still like a heavy porcelain doll. But the shock of seeing her in the same place she feared did not soften, but became even more exorbitant.

No dismay cried out by Jamie was able to bring Dani to the surface. It did not matter the intensity of her pain or her love. There are things, after all, that do not depend on love or justice. There are things that spontaneously happen without any justifiable reason. Jamie knew that. She refused to accept it, however. And it was not her pain or her love that changed the course of this outcome, but her stubbornness.

  * ••••••



The funeral, evidently a closed casket due to the lack of body, took place the following week, and brought together old friends, family, and new friends. Like a robot, Jamie received condolences from the most unusual people. Some florist's clients, distant relatives of Dani, her ex-mother-in-law. Words of comfort were whispered in her ear as tight hugs were exchanged. The florist's reaction was always the same: a polite, short thanks, and the lack of a smile.

It was only when she saw the familiar face of Owen, a former cook at Bly Manor and now owner of his own restaurant, that her thoughtless reaction finally changed. The man appeared before her, offering her a sad smile hidden by a thick black mustache, and opened his arms for the standard hug. His condolences, however, meant much more than the others’. Jamie hugged him tightly, finally suffering the agony that evacuated her chest. She cried endless tears, groaned, screamed. Owen held her with all the support that their common past could offer, and slowly guided her out of the establishment.

It was raining and the sun was setting. The lights on the streetlamps, so yellow and flickering, now took on an orange glow, blurred and clouded by the insistent rain. But Owen and Jamie were protected by the upstairs balcony that allowed them to stay outside without getting wet.

"I didn't expect you to come," Jamie said, wiping tears from her eyes with the sleeves of her black coat.

"You two mean a lot to me," Owen replied. “And I know what it's like... losing someone dear”

Jamie nodded. Owen subtly removed a metal flask from the inside pocket of the wool coat he wore and offered it to the florist.

“Owen, you really are a savior”, she took the canteen, turned the lid to open it, and took a huge sip of the alcoholic drink it contained.

“Do you think I would come empty-handed? I didn't bring drugs because they would arrest me at the airport. But nobody cares about gin, apparently”.

“How are you?”, Jamie handed him the canteen, and he also took a sip of the gin.

Owen shrugged.

“How can I be. Business is great. I can cook whatever I want, and there are days when I don't even cook, I just organize everything. I think I can call myself an ‘entrepreneur’ today”

“I'm happy for you”

“I think of her every day”

The two looked at each other with regret, and Jamie leaned her back against the wall. She knew he was talking about Hannah Grose, the former housekeeper at Bly Manor.

"And we didn't even have what you two had," Owen continued. “We never even... got together. This does not mean that I don’t miss her every day”

"That house..." Jamie said, with disgust and anger in her voice. “It's that damn house. That fucking curse or whatever haunts it. Finally, Bly Manor took its last victim”.

A silence continued, during which the two interlocutors drank several sips of gin until the bottle was at the end.

"I don't know if it's the house itself," Owen said, looking at the rain. “For many years I blamed the house, like you. But… after everything that happened, I sincerely doubt that a house, an inanimate object, is the responsible”

“What are you saying?”, Jamie looked at him with questioning and even disbelieving eyes.

“That I think the origin of everything is not the house. It must have been someone who lived in the house. Someone who built it. I don’t know. But houses are not alive, Jamie”

The look exchanged between the two lasted longer, in which the perception fell on the florist as the rain fell on the outside lawn.

“You… do you think we could find out?”, She asked, a sparkle in her sudden look that could set a wheat field on fire.

“Find out what? The origin?”, Owen took the last sip from the bottle. He turned it upside down to see if any final drops would fall into his mouth. Nothing.

“Yes, Owen, the fucking origin!”, Jamie held his arms with pale hands, closing themselves in the thick fabric of his coat. If he was taken aback by her excitement, he didn't show it. “If we find out who haunts that house, who the motherfucker of the lake woman is, maybe we can... we can...”

“Bring Dani back?”, Owen asked without animation. In fact, he spoke as if the idea had already been dismissed.

Jamie loosened her hands, and after a few seconds she released his arms.

“You do not understand. You don't know how it went”. She took a couple of steps away and crossed her arms, hugging her body in order to comfort herself from the weight of memories that vibrated before her eyes. “She lived with Dani. Within the same body, Owen. Or do you really think that an almost drowning experience darkens one eye? Where did you read that this is possible? Huh?”

“You told me that the doctor said…”

“We fucking lied! Dani insisted that we lied, that we didn't tell the truth. I know what happened, okay? It was the only way to save Flora. Dani sacrificed herself. She invited the woman from the lake to… into herself”. Jamie looked away into the house. “And after all these years she took over her”

"Jamie...", Owen put the gin bottle back in the inside pocket of his coat and stood in front of the florist. He took one of her hands in both of his and his gaze was penetrating and serious behind those metal-rimmed glasses. “I saw Hannah that night. I saw her that night, and the coroners told me that she had died longer ago in that well. I know I'm not crazy, especially since Henry gave me a...”, He swallowed and sighed, hesitantly. “... he transmitted me a message from her. He said... he said Hannah... asked him to tell me that she loved me. So, no, I don't think you're crazy. By God, I don't doubt anything that happened in that house. If you say that this woman from the lake lived within Dani, I believe you”

Jamie smiled as she hadn't smiled in a long time. A spark of hope was kindled in her chest, and she wondered why, in all these years, she hadn't been visiting Owen more often. He was, in fact, a true friend.

"I'm sorry about Hannah, Owen," Jamie said at last. “What an amazing woman she was. She made me laugh without even trying. And she loved you so much that even I could feel her love for you”

Owen's eyes filled with memories, and he smiled back at her.

“But I really think Dani has a chance, because her case is different from Hannah's”, the florist continued. “She's in the lake, Owen. She's still in the lake, sharing her body, her soul, who knows what other shit, with that woman. With the fucking ghost”

“Do you know what I think?”, Owen asked, a mischievous look crossing his eyes.

“What?”

“That it's time for us to pay Bly a visit”

  * ••••••



They didn't go to Bly Manor in the first place. In fact, that place had received a different name; courtesy of Henry, who managed to list the site as a UNESCO heritage, using as an excuse the antiquity of the Manor and its supposed architectural instability. “Too dangerous to be visited by tourists; too precious to be demolished”. Therefore, the Manor was sealed. Empty forever and ever.

No. Owen and Jamie went to Bly town in England, in Essex County. More precisely, to the city library.

It was an equally dark place, as was almost everything in that city. The library was in front of the pub where Jamie, many years ago, had lived in a small flat. Having spent much of her life in a bright, big-city setting in the United States, Jamie wondered how she got used to Bly's peaceful and somewhat frightening life.

"That's all we have about Bly Manor," said a woman in her seventies as she placed a huge cardboard box on the table where Jamie and Owen were surrounding.

The box stank of old mold, and Jamie covered her face with the fabric of her shirt so she wouldn't inhale that contaminated air.

“Are you sure that's all?”, Owen asked, and coughed to the side, clearly another victim of the strong musty smell.

"It's all that's left of the flood," replied the lady.

“Excuse me? What flood?”, Jamie asked, a little desperately.

“About thirty years ago there was a unique flooding. We lost half of the historical documents, it was a huge devastation. My son said it was Bly's Alexandria fire. Imagine how many historical accounts we end up missing. How many documents that have never been transcribed or copied. How many stories just disappeared from existence. How many forgotten people”, She sighed. “Anyway, a big loss, as I said. Feel free. We close at seven, so you have five hours”.

This new information squeezed Jamie's chest terribly. What if the origin of the Bly Manor haunting had been lost? What if she would never find out about the lady in the lake? And what if Dani would never…

She felt Owen take her hand. It was as if he had read her ominous thoughts. He gave her a confident look, and then looked at the librarian again.

“Well, thank you very much for all your effort. Do you open every day?”

“Except on Sundays”

“Great. Sunday is my weekly rest really; a man needs to meditate for more than twelve consecutive hours in order to survive”

The lady looked at him without understanding, but she smiled regardless of that and left.

Owen reached into the box and removed the huge pile of documents; there were parchments, yellow, crumbly, smelly sheets, eaten by moths, blank sheets (the ink was gone), there was everything. He placed half the pile in front of Jamie and half in front of himself.

“Here, half for each. You can start with less moldy half and I get the whole mold”

"What a gentleman," murmured Jamie as she sat down on the long bench in front of the table and pulled the first document from the pile toward her: an old parchment folded in half.

“You know, I'm used to mold. I'm a cook, I work with all kinds of cheese”

“Owen, what if...”

“No, darling. Let us not think about that possibility. Let’s have faith, at least once in our lives. Ok?”

Jamie smiled sadly at him, but nodded, and the two went into their tiring work of discovering what had started the haunting at Bly Manor.

Hours passed.

Nothing was found.

  * ••••••



On the second day, Owen entered the library holding two cups of coffee in his hands. He flirted with the elderly librarian so that she would allow them to have drinks inside, after all, they were in the back, where no one was going. Where were the old documents and the only worker on site, except for the lady: her grandson, who spent more time smoking pot and listening to music on his Sony discman than actually cataloging the books and documents.

“Did you find anything?”, Asked the chef, placing Jamie's coffee delicately next to her on the table and going to sit across the table in front of her.

"Look at this," said Jamie, reading by the light of a flashlight, for it was dark, an old yellowish parchment. “There was an attempt at exorcism at the Bly Manor in the late 17th century”

“Blimey, are you serious?”, Owen took two long sips of his coffee and went to sit next to Jamie to see the document.

“Yes, look, it's a document from the church, from Rome”, The florist held out the parchment so that the man could see it too. “They sent an exorcist priest from Italy here. But he ended up… dying”

“Coincidence? Definitely not. Drink your coffee or it will get cold”

Jamie handed the parchment to Owen and took her coffee. She blew on it and took a sip of it. She smiled to herself, remembering the dreadful coffees Dani used to make.

“Right. If the attempt of exorcism was in the late 17th century, I think maybe the curse started just before that”, said Owen. “Do we have documents prior to that time?”

“I haven't seen it yet, I'm recreating it in decreasing order. I found the death certificate of a boy in the 18th century who lived in the Manor…”, Jamie left the coffee aside and rummaged through some documents until she found what she mentioned. “And guess what? The housekeeper of the time witnessed a ‘woman with long dark hair carrying the boy into the lake’. The same way she carried Flora, Owen. Do you notice anything here?”

“… Actually, I don't know what you mean”

“Owen, think with me. That lake woman killed the priest. She killed, I don't know how many people more, because what I find most here are death certificates. But the children she takes to the lake...”

“The children she takes to the lake...”, Owen repeated, eyes lost in the beyond trying to understand where that information could take them. “So we are looking for a mother who lost her child?”

“It is my hypothesis too, so I am giving importance to that when it comes to searching these documents”

With a new flame in their chest thanks to the discoveries they were making, the two searched with vehemence. They even asked Mrs. Holton, the librarian, if they could stay longer. As she cared little for the presence of the two, since they only had eyes for the documents of the Bly Manor, she gave them the so desired permission.

"Here is a horror story," Owen said as he nibbled on a piece of the burrito he had clandestinely sneaked into the library in his coat and looked at an old book that was almost falling apart.

“What?”, Asked Jamie, who had huge dark circles around her tired eyes.

“Viola and Perdita Willoughby... and then Lloyd. Two sisters who... well, it's confusing”, He replied.

“What happened?”

“17th century. Viola married her cousin, Arthur...”

“Ew”

“I know, it was like that. Anyway, she married him and they had a daughter, Isabel. Viola came ill with ‘lung disease’, probably pneumonia, right?”

“I believe so. Go on, Owen”

“Okay, okay. Viola survived longer than expected. She kept all her expensive dresses and jewelry in a chest that she intended to leave for her daughter as soon as she died. Perdita, her sister, said that Viola one day simply died, but whoever wrote these notes said that a servant saw her suffocate her to death through the crack in the door”

“How horrible…”

“Yes, and guess what? Our dear Perdita stayed with Arthur, Viola's widower”

“Of course, of course, why else would she have killed her sister? Christ. Terrible”

“It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?”, Owen joked. Then he read it again. “Bla bla bla, a lot of uninteresting notes... Ah. Here. Perdita ended up dying in an inexplicable way - from what I've been reading, it looks like it's the Manor's first unexplained death - and Arthur believed Viola's chest was cursed. He took his daughter, Isabel, and moved out of the Bly Manor. But guess where he threw the chest before they left...”

Jamie looked at him with wide eyes.

“In the lake”

“In the lake, yes, ma'am”

“Holy shit, Owen...”

The florist took his arm, and he was grinning. Tears of shock already filled Jamie’s eyes and blurred her vision.

“It's her. The lady in the lake is Viola Willoughby!”, She exclaimed.

“If I'm not 100% sure, I'm 99.9%, and that's enough for me”

The two shared a hug; Jamie closed her eyes so tightly that tears streamed down her cheeks, and Owen laughed happily, stunned by his discovery.

“Some things don't make sense, though...”, said the florist, composing herself and adjusting herself on the bench. “Viola probably killed his sister, the first unexplained death by the ‘woman from the lake’. But why didn't she take her daughter to the lake...?”

Owen was quiet and thoughtful for a while. He took the booklet and read it again. Then he said:

“Because she's trapped in the chest. It says here that Isabel never got to open it. But maybe... Perdita wanted to get some of her sister's dresses. She opened it and… well, perfect chance for revenge. Besides, who said that spirits get bad right after they die? Viola would not kill her own daughter”

“Yeah, perhaps… Do you think she know she's dead? Does she... does she remember her daughter, Owen? That was more than four hundred years ago...”

“Probably not”

“I have an idea”

“Tell me”

“It's a long shot, so you're going to have to trust me. We will have to travel and… return to Bly Manor”

Owen closed the old booklet, stuffed it in his coat pocket, and smiled at his friend.

“I happen to be an adventure lover, my dear”

“… and also a thief”

“What? This? We will need this. I have a terrible problem with names”

“Alright, let’s go”

  * ••••••



Two weeks later, Owen and Jamie were back at Bly Manor in the middle of the night. The cold breeze penetrated the florist's wool coat, black cap and leather boots, intensifying the shaking that nervousness had started.

They were really going to try that madness.

That same day, a little earlier, the two had invaded the Manor, which, for them, was more familiar than their own homes, and stole two paintings: the one of Viola Willoughby, which hung from the wall on the first flight of stairs, and that of Arthur and Isabel, which they found in one of the cellars. "Thank God for the painters who named their pictures on the back," Jamie had said.

“Are you ready?”, Owen asked, standing next to Jamie in front of the car they had rented to return to the Manor.

Jamie, more nervous than ever, just nodded. She carried in her hands a huge cloth sack with an incredibly old and stained rope clasp. Owen, in turn, wore a beret and a long gray overcoat, and carried the two paintings on his back, tied with strings of cotton.

"I trust you, Jamie," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

It was so cold that his breath created white smoke in front of his mouth.

The moon shone brightly, and its silver light illuminated the lawn and the dew that the fog brought. The Manor was closed, but they weren't headed for it. Owen and Jamie had parked the car by the lake. The car's headlights were on, pointing to the lake. That lake...

The florist found herself frozen in place, however. It was as if her muscles had petrified or froze, and she couldn't take a step. Was she terrified that her plan would not work, or was that just a feeling conveyed by the dark environment? The only thing that moved in her body was her chin, which was shaking with cold.

"Hey, Jamie," Owen's voice resonated in her ear. “We have to go, dear.”

“What if it doesn't work, Owen?”, She asked, her voice breaking with an undoubted fear. “What if it doesn't work?”

“If it doesn't work out, we'll find another way. Remember what you said to me? Dani is still in there, isn't she? Didn't you see her?”

"Yes." Jamie took a deep breath, remembering when she dove into the cold waters and saw her lover's inert face. “Yes, I saw her. You're right. Dani is inside”

She finally took the first step. And then another. And another.

Until the two were walking side by side towards the lake.

Its surface was immobile, covered by a thin layer of fog that, in turn, danced to the right in swirls and waves, like the smoke of a giant incense.

The air itself felt heavy, difficult to swallow. Jamie was struggling to breathe, by the way. Owen seemed to be having the same problem as he cleared his throat a few times and swallowed his own saliva. The effect of the gloomy and caliginous environment, and the memories that it irrefutably arose, spread through the blood of the friends.

Until they reached the lake and stopped walking. Jamie, with teary, wide-open eyes, stared at the murky, dark waters. Owen too. As agreed, he removed the paintings from his back and carefully placed them on the floor, untied them and left them free, face down. The florist, however, clasped her hands in the large bag she was carrying and felt the contents incredibly hard and pointy.

"Remember not to meddle, Owen," Jamie said firmly for the first time that night, turning to look at her friend beside her. “Promise me”

"I will be here for you, dear," he replied, and took a few steps away until he was behind a tree near the lake.

Jamie had insisted that he wouldn’t be a part of it, unless she needed his help. She didn't want to risk her friend's life, no matter how much he wanted to see Hannah, his eternal beloved one.

The florist took a deep breath. The time has come.

The time was now.

It was now... or never.

She pulled a lot of air into her lungs and shouted into the lake:

“VIOLA!”

Her voice echoed through the fields and the woods. Her voice shook the fog over the lake. Or was it her voice that really caused it?

But nothing happened.

“VIOLA!” Jamie shouted again.

nothing.

“VIOLA WILLOUGHBY! I KNOW YOU'RE THERE! VIOLA! VIOLA!”

Tears started to rise in her eyes as she realized that the inertia continued. Would nothing happen? Was she being naive, idiot?

“VIOLA?”

Was the woman from the lake really Viola Willoughby?

“VIOLA!”

Was Dani still in the lake?

“VIOLA!!!”

Maybe nothing was going to work.

“VIOLA!”

She had lost Dani forever.

“Viola…”

Jamie entered the lake until the water hit her knees. Owen made a move to leave his hiding place and go to her, wrap her in a hug and say that everything was fine, that they would find another way to recover Dani, or at least her body. However…

“VIOLA!”

A head emerged in the center of the lake.

A well-known head... with wet blond hair. Jamie held her breath and her crying stopped at the same moment. Owen's eyes widened, he was more afraid than he had ever been in his life, and went back into hiding completely, peering through the tree at the scene.

_Dani._

_Dani was coming._

Viola was coming.

The two of them came towards Jamie, both occupying Dani's body. Jamie feared so much for her life that she walked back and left the lake as Dani walked towards her, appearing more and more. Her body was completely visible, her clothes were wet. She was still Dani. Perfectly Dani. With only a single change, Jamie realized, terrified:

Both of her eyes were brown.

"Viola Willoughby, I know it's you...", Jamie continued to say in a broken voice, filled with strong emotions.

Before her was Dani, the angelic face she had never thought to see again. The eyes that looked at her did not belong to her, but everything else did. She hadn't stopped walking yet. She only stopped when she reached a meter away from Jamie, her feet still submerged in the dark waters of the lake.

“Listen, I know who you are. You are Viola Willoughby, wife of Arthur Lloyd”

Jamie bent down, tripped and almost fell, but managed to take one of the paintings and hold it in front of herself. It was that portrait of Viola from her heyday, in which she was a very attractive young woman, with green and striking eyes. With a pompous and haughty pose.

Dani looked at the painting, and said nothing. Her silence was terribly disturbing. Jamie wasn't sure Dani was there with her, or if it was just Viola.

Finally the woman from the lake reached out a hand and touched the painting, over her own face, or the face she used to have. The face she had forgotten, but now… remembered.

"That's you, Viola," Jamie said in a shaky voice. She slowly bent down and picked up the other painting, struggling to hold the two in front of her. “And this one is your husband. This is your daughter, Isabel. You recognize her, don't you?”

Dani's dark eyes locked on the portrait of her daughter and her husband. Once again she put her hand on Isabel's face. Her wailing mouth opened and made an animalistic growl… like a tearful cry. The sound startled Jamie, but she remained steady and still.

"Isabel, your daughter..." Jamie went on. “She is what you are looking for, isn't it, Viola?”

The florist realized that the woman from the lake was crying the way she could. The way the pain in her dead chest could be expressed. And crying was expressed through guttural screams to the dark sky.

"Listen, Viola, there's something I need to tell you..." Jamie hesitated when Dani looked at her deeply, her eyes wet. “You died a long time ago. Hundreds of years ago. And do you know what that means?”

Silence, but Jamie knew that Viola was listening and maybe even understanding through Dani.

“It means that Isabel is also dead. It's been a while”

Viola screamed through Dani, which froze the blood of both Jamie and Owen, and took a menacing step towards the florist, as if she would kill her if she said anything else that would hurt her.

Jamie took a step back, frightened. However, she did not stop, much less cornered in the face of danger.

"And this body, this body is not yours, Viola," she resumed. “That body doesn't belong to you. It's Dani’s. You need to leave her... you need to... leave her so that you can find your daughter again”

Another scream, and another menacing step. Dani's expression was a fierce and alarming grimace, like that of a hungry zombie.

Jamie dropped the paintings to the floor and just held the bag she had thrown to her back by the handles.

“I don't know how you ended up connected to the chest, Viola. But you don't have to stay in it anymore. You can go out. You are free. You can find Isabel again...”

It seemed that her daughter's name was a tremendous trigger for Viola, who apparently recovered some memories because, at the mention of Isabel, Viola, though Dani's body, held Jamie's neck tightly as if she were about to kill her.

Owen immediately ran out from behind the tree to assist her, but she shouted:

“OWEN, NO! HANG ON!”

He stopped in the middle of the race, panting, nervous, with hair standing on end.

Jamie took the hand of Dani who was suffocating her with one hand and held the bag with the other hand.

“Isabel is here!”, She shouted, and pushed the bag against Dani. “Your daughter is here!”

Viola, though Dani, released Jamie's neck and focused on the bag. Jamie was able to breathe again, although she got a terrible bruise around her neck that would linger for several days. Dani took the bag and opened it.

She reached inside and pulled out its contents.

_Bones._

_Ancient bones._

Isabel's bones.

What's left of her daughter.

And it seemed that Viola recognized, somehow, that the bones did belong to Isabel, because she turned the bag downwards, dumping all the bones on the floor, and something extraordinary happened:

Viola crouched down, screaming animalistic and grotesque cries, and at the same movement, Dani was thrown to the side. Dani's body and Viola's body got separated. Viola, the faceless woman from the lake, was hunched over her daughter's bones, screaming and wailing on her knees, while Dani, the real Dani, was lying on the ground a few meters away, unconscious.

Jamie almost didn't believe it when she witnessed that scene. Her impetus wanted to run to Dani and make sure she was alive. But her reason told her to stay, as she still had Viola's dilemma to resolve. She still needed to close this story once and for all.

Sneakily, Owen went to Dani and started trying to revive her very quietly.

Jamie, in turn, approached the lake woman, Viola, whose face was erased. She had no eyes, no nose, and only traces of a mouth that was once very beautiful. Viola collected her daughter's bones and pressed them to her chest, screaming to the heavens.

“Do you remember, Viola?” Asked the florist. “Do you remember Isabel?”

Viola looked at Jamie, and another extraordinary thing started to unfold. Her eyes were reappearing; resurfacing in that face that used to be just skin. Her eyes, her nose, her mouth... her whole face gradually took shape again, despite the sad and anguished expression.

Her mouth opened.

“I… I… I remember”, her voice barely a whisper.

Jamie crouched down to be close to her. She saw that Viola was beautiful as well as her portrait. The artist, whoever he or she was, made justice to her beauty.

“I'm sorry about that, Viola. It is a terrible thing to say. But it's true. You are dead... and so is your daughter”

Viola looked at her daughter's bones, then at Jamie, and then, over her shoulder, at the lake that had served her for so many centuries as her home.

“How… how do I find her? How do I do it?”

"I think you have to accept it," Jamie replied, and glanced at Owen, who was still trying to wake Dani. “You have to accept that you're dead, and... I don't know, move on to the other side. Because that's where your daughter is”

The lake woman, still hugging Isabel's bones, looked at the grass beneath her. She rocked back and forth... like a desolate child...

“I'm dead... I'm dead... I'm dead...”

“Your sister killed you...”

“My sister killed me...”

“Isabel is dead”

“My daughter is dead...”

“And you will find her”

“I will find Isabel”

Gradually, Viola's image disappeared. It became more matte, transparent... until she got up and looked at Jamie. A penetrating, sad, wise look. And finally, a smile. Finally she vanished completely, and Jamie could get up and run to Dani.

  * ••••••



“And then? Did they manage to wake Dani up?”

Who asked this was Flora, in 2007, when Jamie, in her forties, told this “ghost story” (or was it a love one?) the day before Flora’s wedding.

They were in a circle around the fireplace, inside another manor, listening intently to Jamie's story and also watching the fire soften into hot embers.

Before Jamie could even answer, however, someone answered for her. It was a blonde woman with short hair who came up behind Jamie's armchair and placed a hand - adorned with a beautiful golden ring - on her shoulder.

"They did," she said with a smile. “Of course they did”.

Jamie, smiling, put a hand over hers, caressing her skin.

“And they live happily today”, completed the florist.

Dani looked at her, tenderness seeping from her expression and smile.

"It sounds like a love story, not a ghost one," Flora said.

“Isn’t it the same thing?”, Jamie asked.

"I think Flora is right, darling," Dani replied, and lifted Jamie's hand to kiss her fingers affectionately. “It's a love story”

"Or a stubbornness one," Owen said, a few years older, on the other side of the room, and made everyone laugh.

“Well, it's late. I need to prepare for a big event tomorrow,” said Flora's fiancé, starting to get up.

The rest did the same. They got up, wished good night, and left. Owen gave Jamie and Dani a smile and a wink, and went away too. Only the two of them were left. Jamie stood up, her hand still holding her beloved's. They faced each other and leaned over to exchange a kiss that was both passionate and romantic.

"To this day, I can't believe you risked your life for me," Dani said, stroking Jamie's waist as their foreheads touched gently.

"To this day, I can't believe you haven't learnt how to make tea, Poppins," said Jamie, which made Dani laugh.

**The end.**

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it!!! Let me know your thoughts :)


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